The Australian Who Fell for Korean Traditional Liquor

Julia Mellor is an Australian who came to Korea to become an English teacher and ended up falling in love with traditional Korean liquor. She founded The Sool Company* to teach foreigners how to brew it, and now she’s expanding overseas to spread the word even further. What does she find so captivating about Korean liquor?

Interviewer Parc Jinmyoung
Interviewee Julia Mellor (CEO, The Sool Company)
*The Sool Company plans a variety of programs related to traditional Korean liquor, including education and promotion conducted in foreign languages, as well as brewery tours.

I’m curious how you’ve been lately.
I’ve been going back and forth between Seoul and Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. I’m preparing to open a second location of The Sool Company in Amsterdam. Once it’s established, I think Amsterdam will become the base camp for The Sool Company.

Why the Netherlands, of all places?
I wanted to introduce Korean traditional liquor abroad, so I kept knocking on the doors of the US and European markets. The Netherlands turned out to be relatively open to people with new content and ideas. It’s also one of the strongest exporting countries in Europe, so the conditions lined up well in many ways.

How far along is the preparation?
First, I need to introduce Korean traditional liquor there. It means starting from scratch again, even though I’ve been doing this work for 13 years. Traditional liquor is incredibly popular in Korea these days, and interest in Korea overall—K-pop, Korean food, and so on—is growing abroad too. I felt like now was the right time to enter the overseas market, so I decided to move to the Netherlands.

Do you think Korean traditional liquor could be popular abroad too?
Absolutely. More foreigners than you’d think already know about soju. I’ve worked with Korean traditional liquor for a long time, but I’m still amazed every time I make it. It’s a drink anyone can easily make at home with just rice, nuruk (fermentation starter), and water. You can drink it unfiltered right after fermentation (原酒, wonju), or refrigerate it so the layers separate—the clear liquid on top becomes cheongju (clear rice wine), and mixing the cloudy liquid at the bottom with water makes makgeolli. Distill the wonju, and you get soju. It has a special charm that’s different from wine or beer.

Yet Koreans themselves tend to drink wine rather than traditional liquor at gatherings or parties. How do you feel seeing that?
It’s such a waste! Ah, I mean, it’s a shame (laughs). But things have changed a lot lately. Younger people are starting to take an interest in traditional liquor, and the variety of distilled spirits is growing too. Beyond rice, people are using sweet potatoes or nurungji (scorched rice) as well.

What made you fall in love with traditional liquor?
Australians love to drink to begin with (laughs). Actually, I used to love wine, but when I first came to Korea in 2007, I found wine was way too expensive. I started drinking traditional liquor instead, and that’s how my interest began. The most fascinating thing is that anyone can make it with just rice, nuruk, and water, but the taste changes depending on the brewer’s mindset and skill. Another advantage of Korean liquor is that it’s aged for a long time at low temperatures, so there’s no hangover.

When you first came to Korea 17 years ago, did you imagine you’d end up staying this long?
No (laughs). A friend who was teaching English in Korea told me it was a great place to live, so I came, originally planning to stay about two years. Once I settled into life here, I found it so comfortable and enjoyable. Teaching English suited me well too. But then there came a point where I hit a ceiling as an English teacher, and I started thinking about what to do next.
Around that time, I was running a drinking club with friends called ‘Makgeolli Mamas and Papas,’ and I thought, why not turn this into a business? By then, I’d spent about three years drinking traditional liquor with foreign friends and reviewing the tastes, so I’d accumulated quite a bit of knowledge. I think of what The Sool Company does now—teaching traditional liquor to foreigners, consulting for overseas breweries—as an extension of that teaching. Combining teaching with liquor turned out to be so much fun. It’s already been 13 years since I founded The Sool Company.

You probably weren’t fluent in Korean at first—how did you learn about traditional liquor?
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that all I knew when I came to Korea was ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ (laughs). There were traditional liquor classes for foreigners, but I felt I needed to learn Korean to truly understand traditional liquor. While studying Korean, I completed full courses at the Gayangju Research Institute, the Korean Traditional Liquor Research Institute, and Makgeolli School.

How are The Sool Company’s traditional liquor classes structured?
Typical traditional liquor classes tend to focus heavily on theory. I believe the most important thing is learning by getting your hands on it directly. I run hands-on, practice-focused traditional liquor classes in English.

I’m curious how you introduce traditional liquor abroad.
I think it’s still too early to introduce takju, yakju, and other fermented liquors abroad, especially in Europe. The first thing to introduce is distilled spirits. At The Sool Company, we divide these into table strength soju—16 to 25 percent alcohol, meant to be paired with food—and spirit strength soju, which is similar to vodka. We coined these terms because when foreigners hear ‘soju,’ the first thing they picture is the green bottle, and they don’t really know how to drink the higher-proof versions. But in fact, the higher-proof liquors are often more flavorful and distinctive. Brewing them also requires long, careful observation and a high level of skill. That’s what we focus on promoting. Once that groundwork is laid, introducing takju, yakju, or other fermented liquors has a much higher chance of success. Almost no one abroad knows what makgeolli is yet.

Is there a brewery that stands out most in your memory?
There are too many. Each one has its own charm and story, so it’s hard to pick just one. Joheun-sool Brewery, which brews with rice from Pyeongtaek, is a place I personally work closely with. When I first started The Sool Company, I was looking for breweries that made liquor without sweeteners (there aren’t many of those). By chance, I tried Joheun-sool’s oyangju (a liquor brewed five times), and it was delicious enough to inspire genuine respect. That’s how our relationship began, and we’ve done a lot together since, from labeling bottles to entering liquor competitions. We’ve helped each other out in many ways.

What’s your favorite travel destination in Korea?
I love Jeju Island. Since my father was in the military, we moved around a lot when I was young, so I don’t really have a single hometown, but I did live in Brisbane for a long time. Whenever I go to the sea in Jeju, it reminds me of the beaches in Brisbane.

Do you have any plans to open a branch of The Sool Company in Australia someday?
Well, we need to succeed in the Netherlands first before we think about what’s next, right? (laughs) For now, I want to focus on growing the traditional liquor market in Europe. Starting with an educational center for traditional liquor, I’d like to build a small brewery that shows the brewing process, and eventually even get into rice farming—I want to build a company that covers everything related to traditional Korean liquor, all from abroad.